Post War Vintage....1949 Leaf Paige

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

The 1949 Leaf Leroy "Satchell" Paige is one of the scarcest, high demand,
post-War cards. Had he been given a chance to pitch in the Majors in his
prime he would have been portrayed in the pre-War issues of US Caramel,
Goudeys, Diamond Stars, and the PlayBall sets.

As it is, would a high Graded copy of this Paige be the most valuable card
in the post-War category ?

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Posted By: David Vargha

Right up there with a '52 Topps Mantle, '54 Wilson Franks Ted Williams and a '51 Topps Connie Mack All Star Robin Roberts, I suppose.

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: JimB

It would be up there, but I think a PSA 10 '52 Mantle went for $275,000 a few years ago. I doubt the Paige would reach that level. Just my opinion. I wouldn't be suprised if a mint copy went for close to 100k.
JimB

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Given that there are only SIX of the 1949 Paige cards ever graded as an "8" by ANY of the grading companies...

and ZERO graded as a "9"...

and ZERO graded as a "10"...

then a PSA 10 1949 Leaf Satchell Paige card would probably be the RAREST post war card around.


Maybe not priced as high as the PSA 10 Mantle...

but then again, due to rarity... it might be.

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Posted By: base2base

How much do you think a low grade 49 Leaf Paige would go for in a "1" PSA/SCG/GAI?
You never see this card selling on ebay.

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Posted By: Mike M

I was watching one that was trimmed, and stated as such in the description, on eBay over the summer, and it sold for around $1,000. Otherwise, it was probably in good condition.

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Posted By: Seth B.

David-
It's because I don't collect post-war cards, but somebody explain the Robin Roberts card to me? I mean, I get Ted Williams, I get Mickey Mantle, I even get the Satchel Paige shortprint, but I'm very intrigued by the 1951 Topps Connie Mack All-star Roberts...

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Posted By: Jimi

Let's not forget the 1952 Topps Mathews RC. I just sold my PSA 2 (which would have been an SGC 10 due to a severe crease down the middle of his face), for $1,300+.

Jimi

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Posted By: David Vargha

Roberts, Konstanty and Stanky were likely never issued in the "Current" all star set. There are maybe three known copies of each.

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Mike M

I remember the trimmed Paige you referred to, it did go for
more than $1000. There was another one sometime back that was
ungraded and advertised as less than Vg. It went for $2500.

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Posted By: Glenn

The Paige has been listed on ebay, in PSA-graded form, at least 7 times in the past two and a half years.

I didn't record the exact dates, but these are from least to most recent:

PSA 7 - $17,500
PSA 4 - no bids placed (opening bid $5750)
PSA 3 - $4378
PSA 7 - no bids placed (opening bid $19,995)
PSA 4 [same one as above] - no bids placed (opening bid $5600)
PSA 3 - cancelled
PSA 3 - $5,700

I would expect a typical-looking PSA 1 to fetch around $2800.

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Posted By: Bryan

For what it is worth

I remember one about 4 years ago that was thumb tacked on all four corners to a baseball bat along with a couple other leaf cards. If I remember right it went for over $600.

I wonder what ever became of that card?

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Posted By: zach

I remember that, I seem to remember it also had Wagner's 1949 Leaf on it too.

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Posted By: Mark

I bought my GAI 2 on ebay on 10/3/05 (two months ago) for $2.2k. Thought it was a good deal and may be comparable to a PSA 2: http://imageevent.com/hofcards/baseballhoferssz?p=12&n=1&m=20&c=5&l=0&w=4&s=0&z=2>

Edited to add: I would a GAI 2 '68 3d Clemente would sell for more than $2.2k (if one existed).

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

A 1949 Leaf Satchell Paige GAI 8 just sold for $32k in the Mile High Auction.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

In terms of post war cards, the 1958 Pancho Herrera error card is up there as well....

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Posted By: Hoytdunk

I sold a Leaf Paige in a 2 for $3,400 earlier this year.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Hal

The latest Sports Market Report lists a PSA 8 Leaf Paige
at $42,500. A PSA 9 copy lists for $85,000.

Does anyone know if any 1949 Leaf has been graded a 10 ?
I think it is virtually impossible due to the coarseness
of the cardboard stock that these Leafs were printed on.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Ted:

The info I posted earlier in this thread is accurate as of TODAY according to all the POP Reports.

NONE of the 1949 Leaf Paige cards have EVER graded higher than an 8.

None.

I truly think that a 10 would exceed the Mantle price.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

HAL

I don't know if you are aware of the late '80s "find" of 1949
Leaf BB, 2nd series (scarce), unopened packs. Anyway, 4 boxes
each containing 24 unopened packs surfaced from the Michigan
area. Each pack when opened contained 6 cards.

So....4 x 24 x 6 = 576 cards. Now, there are 49 cards in the 2nd
series, so....576 divided by 49 = approx. 12 cards of each player.

And, indeed there was between 10 - 15 cards of each of the
48 players in this series. Pretty even distribution, which is
what you would expect ? No....?

Except for the 49th card, Mr. Paige; there were only 3 cards
of him out of 576 total cards. There is no explanation for this.
We know that all 49 cards were equally printed on a 49 - card
sheet.

If this find is truly indicative of the distribution of these cards,
then the Paige card is scarcer than we think.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Wow.

I think the CENTERING and PRINT-QUALITY of these cards is usually what keeps them from being graded very high.

Thus, even a card FRESH OUT OF THE PACK might only get a 7...

which is why a 10 would be incredible.

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Posted By: Glenn

"And, indeed there was between 10 - 15 cards of each of the
48 players in this series. Pretty even distribution, which is
what you would expect ? No....?"

Well, yes and no. It is what most people "would expect", but most people don't understand the statistical properties of random distributions and therefore overestimate how close the numbers in a random sample of this nature should be. It would actually be quite astonishing if all of the numbers fell between 10 and 15.

If the total number of each card in the entire printing run is equal and we randomly sample 576 cards from the printing run, the distribution will be approximately normal (i.e., a bell curve). Technically, it would follow something called a Poisson distribution which is not exactly identical to a normal bell curve, but it's pretty darn close.

Anyway, if you have the exact numbers of each card from the find, I can analyze the data and see if they are skewed enough for us to reject the hypothesis that the find really was nothing more than a random sample of a population containing equal numbers of all the cards in the series.

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Posted By: base2base

It's on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/1949-Leaf-8-Satchel-Paige-BVG-3-5-Vg_W0QQitemZ8730294858QQcategoryZ16269QQssPageName ZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Glenn

I understand what you are presenting here. I am a retired EE from AT & T -
Bell Labs. However, I not sure how many others do. Can you please state
your case in simpler terms. Are you saying that a normal distribution of
576 cards does not result in approx. 12 cards per 48 players ?

12 cards x 48 players = 576

I was not the fortunate one to discover this "find" 17 years ago. But, It was
a close friend that did and he shared his findings with me since he knew I
was a serious 1949 Leaf collector. So, I cannot provide you with an actual
breakdown of these 576 cards. However, my recollection is darn accurate and
the fact that there were only 3 - Paige cards in this lot defies all laws of
statistical probability.

T-Rex Ted

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Posted By: Anthony

I read in Rosen's book that some of the packs were left intact, is it possible that there could've been a disproportionate amount of Paiges in the unopened packs? Leaf was terrible with their printing on this issue, it wouldn't be a stretch to think they were just as bad with the distribution.
I have only seen 1 unopened Leaf pack, and it was from the scarce series.

On the other question, PSA has graded 2 PSA 10 '49 Leafs. The Frank Gustine SP that was just auctioned off and a common series Wagner. SGC's pop report doesn't work with Mac's so I couldn't access it, and GAI's won't be available until at least Monday.

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Posted By: Glenn

Ted,

I have all the respect in the world for AT&T EE's. My own father has been an AT&T EE for the past 32 years. I have never been an engineer, but I have been a statistics professor, and your claim that the presence of only 3 Paiges in the group of 576 defies all laws of statistical probability is demonstrably false.

It takes neither a statistician nor an engineer, merely an 8th grade student, to determine that there will be an average of 12 of each card if there are 576 total of 48 different types. Averages are easy to calculate; it's variances that get confusing. Obviously there will be some variation in the numbers; that is, not every card will have exactly 12 just because the average is 12. So we will expect there to be fewer than 12 of some and more than 12 of others. (This is true whether there are equal numbers of each card in the total production run or not.) One (or more in case of a tie) of the 48 cards will be the least frequent in your sample, and another (or others) will be the most frequent.

The probability that any one PARTICULAR card will have exactly 3 examples in the sample of 576 is 0.177%. The probability that there will be a card (any of the 48) that occurs with this fequency is just 48 times this number: 48 x .177% = 8.5%. So even if all the cards were produced in exactly equal numbers, and all the cards were distributed in packs completely at random, there is an 8.5% chance that the card that turns up least frequently in your sample of 576 cards will only turn up 3 times.

This is the same as the probability that a .292 hitter will get hits in both of his first 2 at-bats of a game, certainly not probable but neither is it defiant of any laws of probability of which I am aware.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Glenn

If these 49 cards were randomly packaged, and I think you'd
agree that 96 wax packs represent a pretty good random sample,
then we can apply a bell curve function to describe the ex-
pected distribution. One aspect of this bell curve are the 3-
Sigma points at both ends of this function; therefore, wouldn't
we expect that two of the players of this set of 49 to have
just a few cards ? Not just one as you are stating ?

However, there is a secondary factor that impacts this lack
of Paige cards in this "find". Early in 1949 there was an on-
going legal battle between the Leaf Gum Co. (Chicago) and the
Bowman Gum Co. (Philadelphia) over the rights to certain
players.
In the center of this controversy was the rights to portray Paige.
The Bowman Co. won the legal battle and Leaf was forced to stop
producing BB cards and especially their Paige. This event more
than likely explains why this 2nd series is very scarce and had
very limited distribution. Leaf, however, continued to produce
FB cards in 1949.

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Posted By: Glenn

Ted,

I agree that 576 cards is a decent sample size, but I have no clue if the sample is random. With a mean of 12 and a standard deviation of 3.43, 3 examples of a card represents a z score of -2.62 (applying the standard normal curve, which again, is not exactly accurate but very close). 0.88% of the frequencies should be outliers of this magnitude or greater in either direction.

[That is, cards that occur 0, 1, 2, 3, 21, 22, 23,..., or 576 times in the sample. Since the distribution can't run into negative numbers, our sampling distribution isn't entirely symmetrical. Though vanishingly unlikely, it is certainly possible to have a random sample with n=576 that yielded 576 of the same card, but since the tails of the distribution as we approach and exceed three standard deviations from the mean contain so little area, I figure it's safe to ignore that minor asymmetry.]

In a majority of samples of this size we wouldn't get any cards that showed up fewer than 4 or more than 20 times, but it will happen a noteworthy minority of the time. (So it usually wouldn't be even 1 card, let alone 2.)

I don't disagree that the Paige was a short-print. Given all the evidence out there, I'm pretty sure it is. I just don't think this particular find of 576, on its own, makes a convincing case or is especially remarkable IF the Paige IS NOT a short print.

edited to add: Though it doesn't affect the math much, I was thinking there were only 48 different cards. Now I realize there are actually 49. (Confusion related to the debate about whether the cards were produced in the year '48 or '49?)

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Posted By: scott ingold

ah man now my head hurts.. thanks guy's

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Posted By: Darren Duet

Didn't Wayne Varner advertise a GAI 9 or 10 about a year ago for $75,000?

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Posted By: Anthony

Wayne had a '49 Bowman, not Leaf.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I once heard (I think it was on Star Trek) that the simplest explanation, all other things being equal, is usually the right one. Leaf used 49-card sheets to print its cards. The cards were then cut, collated and packed. The collation is the point where randomness failed. The cards were not perfectly collated. I purchased a large Leaf boxing collection from the original owner and had a similar experience: as many as a dozen of certain cards and none of some others. It isn't short prints or mathematical models of randomness, it is lousy collation.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I think the problem is that Leaf hired ex-cons to collate...

and they pocketed every other Paige card to take home and sell to their fence.

Too bad Ted Z. was not that fence!!

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Posted By: Darren Duet

Adam,

Occam's Razor as described by Carl Sagan in Contact.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

The lack of Paige cards is not attributable to "collating"
problems. The collating process doesn't know the difference
between a Paige, a Doby, or any other player....it's random.
If this was true there would be other players in this 2nd
series of 49 cards that would be just as tough to find.

I have seen many of these "scarce" Leafs over the years in
the process of completing my set and up-grading it. Sure there
are players like Enos Slaughter, George Kell, Bob Feller, and
Larry Doby that are somewhat tougher than the others; but, no
where near as tough as Paige.

In 1981 I was doing research on this Leaf BB set and the 1949
Bowman set for an article for Bob Lemke. I spoke with an older
Leaf employee in Chicago and I visited with George Moll, near
Philadelphia. Moll ran the Adv. agency for the Bowman Gum Co.
They talked about the litigation battle of which Gum Co. had the
rights to market BB card premiums with their Gum product.

Bowman was first with their 1948 BB issue, and when Leaf was
first in 1949 with their BB issue, Warren Bowman (Pres.) took
the Leaf Co. to court. We know the outcome of this litigation,
Bowman won their case. The conflict was not only who was first
to market, but who had contractual rights to portray certain
players. Satchell Paige was the focus of attention, as were
some other players. But, since Paige was the new "hot" rookie
ballplayer the year before, Bowman argued that they exclusively
had the rights to portray him, and that Leaf should desist from
marketing him.

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Posted By: Joe Jones

The new smithsonian book about baseball collecting has pictured a psa 9 paige.

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Posted By: JimB

I saw that '49 Bowman that Wayne Varner had at a show. It was unbelievable!
JimB

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Posted By: Anthony

According to PSA's pop report they have never graded a Leaf Paige 9.

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Posted By: Joe Jones

It could be a typo because the picture has the psa holder cropped out.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

It is a typo.

The card is the book is an 8.

I believe that is the card owned by Marshall Fogel that I was discussing with him on the other thread.

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Posted By: Mike M

There is a foot note in the current SMR indicating a PSA 8 sold for $70,671. It didn't say when.

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Posted By: identify7

Glenn, Ted:

Doesn't this statement:

In a majority of samples of this size we wouldn't get any cards that showed up fewer than 4 or more than 20 times, but it will happen a noteworthy minority of the time. (So it usually wouldn't be even 1 card, let alone 2.)


Agree with this statement:

However, my recollection is darn accurate and
the fact that there were only 3 - Paige cards in this lot defies all laws of
statistical probability.


Except for the fact that T-Rex overstated the unliklihood, perhaps to emphasize his point.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

if you want a Paige card issued right around the same time as the Leaf and Bowman but don't want to spend a small fortune, there is a Paige in the Exhibit set.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

How ironic that this thread has found a way to merge with the 1951 Toleteros Gibson thread:


Someone paid $70k for a PSA 8 1949 Leaf Paige card...

and someone paid $70k for an SGC 88 (8) 1950 Toleteros Gibson card.



Both are the highest graded examples of that particular card known to exist, and both cards are fairly scarce in ANY condition.

Both players were STARS of the Negro Leagues and BOTH were the VERY FIRST two Negro Leaguers inducted in the Major League Hall of Fame.



Funny how a completely "free market" dictated identical prices on nearly identical cards in two totally different auctions several months apart.

(The Gibson card is much harder to find, but the Paige card was issued during his playing days... so these factors apparently cancelled each other out)

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Posted By: Glenn

Gil,

No. It is akin to saying that for a home team to score 6 runs in a baseball game defies all laws of statistical probability. Or, to coin a Yogi-ism: Things that happen less than half of the time happen all the time.

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Posted By: identify7

So Glenn, am I correct in surmising that if Ted's statement had been:

"However, my recollection is darn accurate and
the fact that there were only 3 - Paige cards in this lot seems quite unusual".

You would be in agreement.


Edited to add: Yogi is the artistry that years of tutoring by Ol' Casey can produce.


Further edited to add: Things that happen less than half of the time, happen all of the time, but each infrequently.

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Posted By: Glenn

Yes, that'll work. I'd have said "somewhat unusual" or "rather unusual," but "quite unusual" is close enough.

And a tip of the hat to Casey from me as well.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

OK, let's stop bickering and nit-picking over my choice
of words in my earlier post on this subject. And, raise
this discussion to a higher level.

The 1952 Topps Mantle consistently gets bigger $$$$ than
any other post-war card. It is by no means tough to find,
and is actually a double-printed card. At shows I always
check-out the display of cards that "707 Sportscards" has
to offer.
Levi Bleam will invariably have anywhere from 10 - 14 1952
Topps Mantle's in varying condition. He seldom has a Leaf
Paige to sell. Levi is a very aggressive buyer of cards, he
always has a pretty good selection of rare Leaf cards.
So, if he can't find a Paige, then I'm certain this is a very
scarce card. Combine this with high demand; and, perhaps
it should command bigger $$$$ than the Mantle.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Anyone think that a 49 Leaf Paige in PSA 7 would go for just 23K?

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Posted By: JimB

The '52 Topps Mantle has become iconic. It is known outside the baseball card collecting world and is second probably only to the T206 Wagner in that respect. Whether or not it deserves such status is another question. I personally would love to have a '49 Leaf Paige (though I like the Bowman card more), but the Leaf's are rather simplistic and rough looking, espeically when compared with the '52 Topps set. And the Mantle card is truly a beautiful card. We all know rarity is only one factor in the value of a card. If I preferred the Paige over the Mantle, I would be happy that it was a relative bargin for the spectacular card that it is. All this said, of the Paige cards I am aware of, I like the '53 Topps the best. And for the record, I have a '49 Bowman in my collection.
JimB

Edited to add:
I am not putting down the Leaf set. I personally love its simplicity. And some of the cards, like the DiMaggio and Williams are spectacular. But I think its simplicity keeps it , as a set from gaining the stature of '52 Topps. And the cards in it follow.